Shaolin & Zhengzhou

The Shaolin Monastery, famous for Kungfu martial arts, was founded in the fifth century A.D. It is said that Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty wanted to honor a favorite Indian Buddhist missionary, Batuo, with a place for meditation in the Song Mountains about half way between the capital Louyang and Zhengzhou. A later Indian monk, Damo (Bodhidharma in Sanskrit) introduced meditative methods that contributed to Zen Buddhism. Concerned with the health problems of continually immobile meditation, Damo developed exercises that later developed into distinctive forms of Chinese kungfu. Visitors to the Shaolin Temple are treated to amazing kungfu perfomances, some of which seem to defy normal human abilities. Zhengzhou has an ancient dating back to about 8,000 BC. Our stay there was brief.

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